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Opinion: When Will the Standards Reflect What We Need?

The curriculum students are forced to learn and the standards we are asked to achieve do not represent what we need as young adults. Most of the classes we’re offered or forced to take will not be useful in the future, therefore will not benefit us. Instead of repeating this cycle the school system needs to start providing and requiring useful classes.

Basic math is important for us to learn problem solving skills like Algebra 1 or Geometry 1, but what happens when we are graded about ridiculous topics like Pythagorean theorems or advanced calculus? Does the grade becom our worth which determines our future? This is where the school system misses the big idea. We are still people; we still have opinions, and just how do others know what we want and don’t want, we know what we don’t need. What happens when the school system is just keeping us occupied instead of giving us useful tools to learn and grow as better people? Why force people to waste their time when we could be helping our society and learning how to benefit not only ourselves but each other?

The cycle we have now creates students who aren’t interested in working or earning, and leads to kids with no motivation and even high school dropouts. Over 1.2 million high school students drop out every year in the United States. People often pass this off as the laziness of the students, but its proven that when students are interested in what they’re learning, they do better. We are constantly being told where to sit, where to pee, and when to speak – but then we get into the real world and everything is up to us. We need to learn the tools like social skills, paying taxes, how to ace an interview that will make us better, and how to be self-supporting people in the world instead of useless math algorithms that we’re all going to forget when summer comes around.

There are so many bright students, not just at North Springs but everywhere, whose voices have been silenced or skills have been deemed as useless. This isn’t necessarily the school’s fault, but it falls upon the the school system. American Education in general continuously fail the students who need the most help, as at this age we should be thriving, learning, and experiencing what life has to offer, not staying up late studying about Mesopotamian culture or conjugating dead languages. It’s time our curriculum starts to help the students instead of just keeping us busy.